Building Capacity for Sustainable Governance in South Asian Fisheries: Poverty, Wellbeing and deliberative Policy networks

This was a pilot project funded by the ESPA programme managed by the UK NERC (Natural Environment Research Council). The purpose was to bring together a range of scientific, policy and political actors involved in the fisheries sector in South Asia to explore the extent to which they are able, and interested, to participate in deliberative policy networks. It is intended that these networks will seek to generate and direct a future programme of research and capacity building in an effort to advance new forms of policy and management solution in fisheries which accommodate conflicts between ecosystem sustainability and poverty alleviation objectives. We facilitated a series of 3 workshops whose aims were to build capacity for deliberative policy networks to advance new forms of governance, centred on the concept of human wellbeing, to better accommodate the agendas of ecosystem health and poverty alleviation within South Asian fisheries. The outcome of the workshops were articles on the application of wellbeing to fisheries and poverty research, governance, and policy, also to contribute to the debates initiated by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. A series of more specific articles and policy briefings covering the application of wellbeing to South Asia fisheries conflicts were produced.